The Wicked OLD Witch Jenny jennyg@compuserve.com Thu Mar 18 10:31:36 1999 A surprising number of our stereotypes about witches are twisted recollections of the realities of the Burning Times. The "Wicked Old Witch" of our fairy tales is one of them.*p*A high number of witches actually were elderly, a fact which contemporaries noticed. *p*In the Burning Times, this was attributed to the "fact" that in old age, the humors became unbalanced. (According to early medicine, there were four fluids -- humors -- that circulated through the human body and were responsible for our health.) The elderly had excessive quantities of "melancholia", the humor that gives us our word "melancholy". It made them sluggish, depressed, and subject to fantasy and madness. Witch-hunters said this made them more susceptible to the Devil's offers; critics, that it made them more susceptible to hallucinations.*p*Once the Doctrine of Humors was ditched, historians were at a loss to explain why the elderly were accused of witchcraft so much more frequently. Some suggested that the main victims -- elderly women -- were the weakest members of the society, and thus the ones least able to defend themselves against charges of witchcraft. There's some truth in that: elderly widows usually didn't have the resources that other women and men had.*p*Some historians proposed that the age of the witches was related to their social status. Witches tended to be poor, and people who could no longer work tended to be the poorest members of a village. Many were reduced to begging, an activity that created many charges of witchcraft.*p*Both of these theories explain some of the data. But recently historians have found another factor that seems to appear in most cases: witches were old because it took a long time to become a witch.*p*Normally, it took years to develop a reputation as a witch. During a craze you could fall under suspicion overnight, but crazes were extremely rare. Most countries only had one or two in all the Burning Times. For the rest of the time, "becoming" a witch took decades. When we break trial records down, we find that they often contain 20-30 years' worth of "evidence." Twenty years ago Farmer Milton's cows died, and he did wonder about Goody Adams. Fifteen years ago the same thing happened to Goodman Alder, after he'd had a falling out with Adams.*p*This sort of anecdotal evidence accumulated over the years. Eventually some crisis occurred, and Goody Adams would find herself accused of witchcraft. At that point her neighbors would appear, telling stories of "crimes" that spanned decades. Witches often complained that they could not contradict their neighbors' evidence, because the events they described had happened so long ago they couldn't even remember them!*p*In the early modern period, people didn't live quite as long as we do, and 50 was considered elderly. Therefore if it takes 20-30 years to develop a reputation as a witch, it's not surprising that many witches were 50 or more years old.*p*Jenny